“We call ourselves the Chick-fil-A of coffee,” says Pretty Good Coffee Company owner and Chief Espresso Officer Sam Nelson. “We’re really friendly and really, really fast. And we don’t want to sacrifice either of those.”
Whether the luxury coffee cart company is catering intimate gatherings of 10 people or events of up to 1,000, Sam says he still has to remind himself that “this is a business.”
Considering that the company started with an espresso machine gifted to his wife, Hannah, Sam’s incredulity at his hobby becoming a legitimate business is understandable — despite Pretty Good Coffee Company’s three-year existence, warehouse space in Raleigh, and four employees.
But had Sam not bought the used home espresso machine, which he ended up liking more than Hannah did, and started to make her vanilla lattes, his enjoyment of preparing drinks and serving people would likely never have taken off. “I got myself a gift back,” he says.
As with any hobby, Sam began collecting more equipment and gaining additional experience. After the website was built, requests for coffee catering started coming in … “and we just kept going,” he says. The first official events were for apartment communities, and Sam and Hannah — who was operationally involved at that time — invested in training their team and getting the right equipment.
Each of the three custom-built carts, Sam says, allows two baristas to serve approximately 100 people in 45 minutes and provides the same quality and speed as a café. The catered experience starts with freshly ground coffee beans from Black & White Coffee Roasters in Wake Forest, which produces the Pretty Good Coffee blend of caramel, black cherry, and milk chocolate — flavors that taste good on their own or with milk. An industry-standard La Marzocco espresso machine is bookended on one side of the cart by the latte art printer on the other, the two working in unison to produce something that Sam says “looks and then tastes beautiful.”
The first step in creating latte art is to perfect the canvas, which comes from steaming the milk and introducing tiny bubbles called microfoam. Sam and his team remove as much water as possible because they know that dry steam leads to tasty milk drinks. Whereas most baristas pull shots and proceed to design manually (though Sam’s team can do that, too), the capabilities of Pretty Good Coffee Company’s latte art printer far exceed typical hearts and rosettes.
The idea of printing on a blank coffee canvas was born from Sam’s hospitality-forward mindset. “If you think about a luxury experience,” he says, “it’s meeting your unique needs in the ways that you need them met.” So, the question became: How can Pretty Good Coffee Company obsess even more over clients’ needs?
Sam and Hannah found the answer at their son’s first birthday party, where they printed his face on all the drinks. Now, clients can send any design or image to be printed on coffee and create custom art that speaks inherently to them.
While Pretty Good’s typical cart menu features the Black & White espresso that’s used for classics like the Americano, latte, or cappuccino, whole milk isn’t the only option for printing, as pistachio milk and other alternatives are available. There are also coffee alternatives like chai or matcha and other teas. Scratch-made house vanilla cardamom, cinnamon mocha, and smoked salted caramel syrups also elevate the experience.
Sam, a native of Elgin, Illinois, who trained as a pastor, believes,“What transported over (to Pretty Good Coffee Company) was that care for people. … We just so happen to do it now through coffee.” When it comes to the future, and the company’s growth, he draws on their mission statement “to transform events with luxury hospitality.” Right now, that is achieved through coffee, but an expansion into mobile bartending or food seems like a natural progression.
Kerrigan Walls, who has been on the team for about a year, has been a barista at a few different coffee shops and considers it meaningful to be able to serve diverse people through coffee.
“This is my favorite job that I’ve ever had,” she says. “Just how supportive Sam is, growing us professionally and personally.”
“There’s so much to (coffee),” Kerrigan continues. “It really is an art form, which is super fun.”
While Pretty Good Coffee Company started as a side business “honestly, just for fun,” Sam confirms something palpable: “It’s still for fun.”
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